Cloudrail, a Mannheim-based start-up founded in 2013, presents solutions for connecting industrial sensors and actuators to almost any cloud platform, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services. With the 'Cloudrail.Box', IO-Link-capable sensors can be connected to the cloud plug & play. The system recognizes and configures connected IO modules and sensors fully automatically. As soon as a sensor or IO module is plugged into the device, it appears directly in the Cloudrail configuration interface. The desired cloud platform is then selected and the sensor data is transferred to the cloud. Where complex integration projects used to take several weeks or even months, this process now takes less than a minute.

"We are seeing more and more traditional automation tasks being taken over by IT departments. With Cloudrail, we are creating a new generation of automation technology for IT staff, namely from the sensor directly to the cloud, without the need for specialist knowledge of fieldbuses, for example," explains Felix Kollmar, Managing Director of the company.

Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), SAP Cloud, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud and the Alibaba Cloud are currently supported. There are plans to add further providers in the future. The 'Cloudrail.Box' is also configured and managed via a cloud-based device management solution. There, users can view status information about all connected modules and sensors, control the data flow to various cloud providers and initiate remote firmware updates. While the start-up is still largely unknown in automation circles, the cloud connectors offered for the software industry are already running on more than 150 million devices worldwide, as Kollmar reports. At the SPS IPC Drives 2018 trade fair stand, sensors will be connected to any cloud as part of a live demo.